Using a variety of image processing techniques, the firm Gigapixel was able to assemble 216 publicly submitted photographs and assemble them into one seamless high-resolution image.
It added that the adoption of internet-connected cameras meant that more footage was being stored off-site for longer periods of time, and that gigapixel camera technology would mean even higher quality images in the future.
Called ARGUS-IS (both named after the mythological eye guy and an acronym for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System) this guy straps a 1.8 gigapixel camera to the bottom of an A-160T Hummingbird robot helicopter.
By comparison, the Duke device represents the "first cut" at making gigapixel cameras for general use, said Shree Nayar, a computer-vision researcher at Columbia University in New York, who has seen the camera at work but wasn't involved in the project.
This isn't the first time the ESO has shown a love for large captures: it managed to stitch together a massive 9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way out of thousands of photographs taken with its VISTA telescope earlier this fall.